4) Marxist Feminist and Radical Feminist Perspectives

Unlike Marxists, Feminists focus more on the emasculation of the women than the working class

Marxist Feminists – Believe that the emasculation of women comes originally from capitalism

Radical Feminists – Believe that it is patriarchy itself that emasculates women

Key points of the Feminists view of the Family

The social reproduction of labour power – the family provides a place where children can be born and raided with security, this then provides capitalism with a good future workforce. It does this in 3 ways:

Women and the family provides a relaxing place,ensuring members of the workforce go to work with their ability renewed

Doing work for the family such as housework and looking after family which is unpaid, helping capitalism for no cost

By socializing children into the dominant ideology and making them good workers, for example socializing children into believing the mother should be a housewife and the father should be the breadwinner

Social Control of the Working-class – The family keeps the working-class people conforming to the dominant norms and values, helping capitalism. For example a family is expected by norms and values to provide for the children; but to do this the parents must stay in work even if it is tedious, low paid and boring.

The Myth of the “Symmetrical Family” – Feminists disagree that there is growing equality between partners. They argue that there is still inequality because it is mainly women who:

perform housework

Make sacrifices to provide for children

make less decisions

be dependant on mens earnings

give up paid work to look after children, sacrificing work opportunities

are more likely to be the victims of domestic violence by men

Criticisms of the Marxist Feminist and Radical Feminists Perspectives

Women’s roles aren’t the same in all families, some are becoming more symmetrical.

Some women choose to fulfill what feminists see as an emasculating role in the family; feminists don’t account for this

Around 70% of divorces are filed by women, this shows that actually women have more power to escape a relationship than Feminists say